Kuyperian, Author at Kuyperian Commentary

On May 9, 2014 By Kuyperian In Books, Scribblings Like

Logic or Dialectic? Which one? When?

Logic or Dialectic? Which one? When? These terms are not mutually exclusive and must, in fact, be employed in conjunction for either to function properly, but in the book Norms and Nobility, David Hicks points out that emphasis may be laid on one or the other depending on the accepted concept of “truth” in a particular cultural climate. The epistemological trends of a people will necessitate whether “dialectic” or “logic” is most often employed, stemming from which one carries the most weight in public discourse.

“The seven liberal arts of antiquity included the four preliminary studies of arithmetic, geometry, harmonics, and astronomy, followed by three advanced disciplines of grammar, which combined literary history and linguistic study, rhetoric, and dialectic. This curriculum passed through the Romans to the Latin West and formed the basis for the medieval quadrivium and trivium. During the Middle Ages, the trivium was generally taught first, with logic taking the place of dialectic. This substitution was not accidental. For an age that possessed the Truth, the dialectical search for truth was a fruitless and even frivolous, irreverent endeavor. When one knows the truth, one has no need for dialectic – all one needs is logic. Yet to an age like ours, lacking the confidence (some would say the complacency) of the early Christian era, the dialectic holds out a serious method of study imbued with a noble purpose.” (p. 66)

No single book, much less a single paragraph, even asks all the questions, much less answers them, and David Hicks does not even remotely pretend to do that, but we would do well to listen when he offers his finely honed opinion on education. The really exciting thing about this quote is that it is only the first paragraph of an entire chapter brimming with both information and provocation–answering old questions and prompting many glorious new ones. It is a book to be read, studied, treasured, and implemented.

Follow this link to a much more thorough review of David Hicks’ seminal work, by Jennifer Courtney.<>tokarevsound.com тест интернета пинг

On May 9, 2014 By Kuyperian In Culture Like

Eye screen, you screen, we all screen for eye screen

Over the years there have been more than a few memes and videos posted to social media about the ways that laptops, tablet computers, and smart phones (a.k.a., “screens”) are causing us to become socially inept hermits who are missing out on “real life.” The latest example is this video. Go ahead and watch. We’ve got all the time in the world.

Now back to our regularly scheduled program.

I will grant that there is more than a little truth in the message that videos such as this try to deliver. Screens have become nearly ubiquitous and it is good for every right-thinking man, woman, and child to step back and ask, “Is my life is an over-connected life? Are there changes I need to make in the area of limiting exposure to ‘screens?'”

Having done that, I would suggest that modern evangelicalism also needs to step back en masse and practice a good measure of overdue introspection. How many evangelicals that robustly “amen” the above video also attend a church where the most prominent architectural feature in their sanctuary is one or more video screens? How many attend churches where the pastor ascends into the pulpit armed with nothing other than a Kindle, an iPad, or some other tablet device? How many attend churches where texting, live tweeting, and/or Facebooking during the service is de rigueur? How many people are following along with the Scripture readings in church on their smartphones instead of shutting those devices down in order to stand and give an attentive hearing (with their ears alone) to God’s Holy Word?

In a more thoughtful, less wired time church architecture revolved more or less around two things–the pulpit and the communion table. From the sparse sanctuaries of the Puritan churches to the more ornate cathedrals of the high churches, it was clear to all that God’s herald would ascend into the pulpit to declare the Good News of Jesus Christ and then would descend to serve as an under-shepherd at the Eucharistic banqueting table of King Jesus.

For centuries Christian churches arranged things this way because they knew that the pattern of preaching and food in Luke 24 was paradigmatic. Empowered by the Holy Spirit, the ordained minister would declare the Good News concerning Jesus to the people, feed them the Eucharist, and then have confidence that the afflicted would be comforted and that the comfortable would be afflicted. The Second Great Awakening blew that paradigm out of the water and we have been downgrading ever since. The modern church no longer has any confidence in the Holy Spirit working through Word and Sacrament. Today’s church must innovate and invest in new techniques, new gadgets, and new technological gee-whizzery in order to “win the unchurched to Christ.”

I suspect that most churches don’t install jumbo-trons to aid the visually impaired or to compensate for poor sight-lines in the sanctuary. They install them because we live in an age of “screens” and because the average religious consumer expects the latest and greatest technology to be front-and-center in the church of his/her choice. At least that is what we were told by the high-dollar church growth consultant.

If we are going to “amen” videos extolling the unplugged life, why can’t we put our money where our “amens” are and begin unplugging on the Lord’s Day during His service? Is it really necessary to have so much technology going on during our services? Can evangelicals stand to be a even a little bit counter-cultural and (gulp!) “uncool” by scaling things back and restoring the centrality of the pulpit and the table during our services? Or are our church services really so barren that if they were forced off of the grid by a massive power/Internet outage would we be left looking around at each other and wondering, “No band, no screens, no words, no access to my online Bible, no latte machine. Now what?”

Before society at large can even hope to address their issues with “screen culture,” evangelicalism needs to take the beam out of its own eye and address its own technological addictions, especially as they pertain to corporate worship on the Lord’s Day.

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Derek Hale has lived all of his life in Wichita, Kansas and isn’t a bit ashamed about that fact. He and his wife Nicole have only six children–four daughters and two young sons of thunder. Derek is a ruling elder, chief musician, and performs pastoral duties at Trinity Covenant Church (CREC). Derek manages a firmware lab for NetApp and enjoys reading, computers, exercising, craft beer, and playing and listening to music. But not all at the same time. He blogs occasionally at youdidntblogthat.tumblr.com.<>

On May 9, 2014 By Kuyperian In Culture Like

Carpe Symphoniam – Seize the Symphony

The Schermerhorn Symphony Center
Nashville, Tennessee

Last Friday night, I accompanied my Classical Conversations, Challenge 2 students and their parents to the Schermerhorn Symphony Center in Nashville, Tennessee, to hear the Nashville Symphony. The symphony orchestra, conducted by Christopher Seaman, performed three Mozart pieces, one of which was his 21^st Piano Concerto, featuring Benedetto Lupo on the piano. It had been too long since I had experienced a live symphony orchestra, and, chances are, it has been too long for you as well. Even if you do not enjoy classical music, I think you should go. In fact, if you don’t like classical music, it is probably because it has been too long since you went to hear it be performed. Assuming that to be the case, I submit three reasons why it should not be very long until you attend a live symphony orchestra performing in their local concert hall. First, music is to be heard; second, music is to be seen; and third, music is to be felt.

1.) Music is to be heard. No surprise here, right? Everyone knows that music is to be heard. That’s the main point of music, of course, but my point is that until very recently, say the last 100 years, music had to be heard live. It was written to be heard live. Now, don’t get me wrong. I have a very good set of speakers at home, and I love to sit in front of them and turn the volume up high enough so that the music fills me up. This is a fantastic way to listen to a good recording, but it will always be that: a recording. My head between my speakers or my headphones does not equal the acoustics of a finely constructed concert hall. At home, the best I can do is “stereo,” and I guess some folks can do “surround,” but at the concert hall you are listening to 50-100 different instruments producing their own sound, from their own location, and then bouncing around the room that was created to bounce music before reaching your ears. Surround sound cannot replicate the acoustics of concert hall. At home you hear a recording; at the concert hall you hear the music.

2.) Music is to be seen. Okay, I know, under normal circumstances, you can’t see sound waves. But what I mean is that music does not birth spontaneously from empty space. People make music, and people are alive, so music is alive. (Not exactly a flawless syllogism, but I stand by the assertion none the less.) If you attend the performance of a symphony orchestra, you not only hear the music, but you see the music being made by the creators themselves. The conductor will lift his arms–baton in hand, and the musicians will respond. He is the head and they are the members of this music-producing body. The violin bows will point toward heaven, praying for the gift of music to be granted. The conductor will momentarily lift baton and eyebrows, both will fall, and the dance will begin. The musicians will sway, shoulders will lean, feet will arch, eyes will close, and chests will rise and fall. The music is alive, because its creators are alive. The instruments themselves come to life as their masters lovingly draw the music out of them while stage lights shimmer on brass and lacquer.

All of this focuses on the musicians themselves leaving out the lighting and architecture of the building. At the Schermerhorn in Nashville, we are blessed with exquisite chandeliers; ornately decorated, vaulted ceilings; and stately, columned architecture. The pipes from the organ stand at perpetual attention behind the stage and exhibit their visual beauty whether or not they are producing their aural beauty.

All of this is yours to take in at your discretion. Watch it all at once, or focus on one specific thing at a time. It’s your call, but only if you’re there.

3.) Music is to be felt. You will not only see and hear the music, you will feel it. There is a visceral delight that can only come when the mezzo piano pizzicato of the strings cadences and the full ensemble enters at a solid forte. It hits you. You feel it, and it feels good. You’re alive and they’re alive, and the music is alive. You’re right; you can feel the boom of speakers at home or in the car. We’ve all experienced the boom of the speakers from someone else’s car, but the feeling I’m talking about is not detached from the other two points I’ve made.

The “feeling” of the music is the culmination of the acoustics, the lights, the conductor, the musicians, and even the little old lady sitting next to you, who smiles when the cadence is especially sweet. Life doesn’t happen in boxes. It happens all at once, and feeling the music at a live symphony performance happens all at once. You must hear the music and see the music and be in the music in order to feel the music in this way.

Inside the Schermerhorn

A symphony orchestra is a crowning achievement of the triune God who made heaven and earth. He is one, and he is three, all at once, all the time. A symphony is 50-100 musicians living and breathing together for 1-2 hours. It is one and it is many, in a way that no other genre of music has ever come close to achieving. A symphony is on a whole other level. It transcends, yet it is right there in front of you, as well as around you, to enjoy.

So, carpe symphoniam, seize the symphony. If you don’t love it now, devote yourself to it, and grow to love it. You will be blessed, and the world will be blessed that another image-bearer of God has become a patron of symphonic music. In our decadent culture, orchestral music needs all the patrons she can get.

This article was originally published at The Untamed Lion Pub.

Listen to a recording Mozart’s 21st Piano Concerto here.

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On May 8, 2014 By Kuyperian In Scribblings Like

Throwback Thursday-St. Cyril of Alexandria on the Resurrection

If you are following the Western church year, we are preparing for the fourth Sunday in Easter. It’s also time for another “throwback Thursday” post where we look back to a church father for their insights into the Christian life and the church year. This week’s paragraph comes from St. Cyril of Alexandria (c. 376 – 444) and is an excerpt from a lecture entitled “On the Ten Points of Doctrine.”

But He who descended into the regions beneath the earth came up again; and Jesus, who was buried, truly rose again the third day. And if the Jews ever worry thee, meet them at once by asking thus: Did Jonah come forth from the whale on the third day, and hath not Christ then risen from the earth on the third day? Is a dead man raised to life on touching the bones of Elisha, and is it not much easier for the Maker of mankind to be raised by the power of the Father? Well then, He truly rose, and after He had risen was seen again of the disciples; and twelve disciples were witnesses of His Resurrection, who bare witness not in pleasing words, but contended even unto torture and death for the truth of the Resurrection. What then, shall every word be established at the mouth of two of three witnesses, according to the Scripture, and, though twelve bear witness to the Resurrection of Christ, art thou still incredulous in regard to His Resurrection?

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On May 8, 2014 By Kuyperian In Family and Children, Theology Like

Educating Royalty: Teaching Our Children to Be Kingdom Heirs—not Just Laborers in the Marketplace

Guest Post by Dr. Roy A. Atwood

“Who are you?” a university student once asked me after class many years ago.

Odd question, I thought. I’d handled countless student questions, but this one caught me unprepared.

“Uh . . . I’m a professor,” I answered weakly.

“No!” he shot back. “I don’t mean what do you do, but who are you?”

His question unsettled me. Like most North Americans, I’d been carefully, though not intentionally, catechized since a lad at my parents’ side that the first and most important question we ask adults at first meeting (after getting their name) is, “What do you do?”

I’d learned that catechism lesson well, repeating it literally hundreds of times in all kinds of social settings over the years. But that catechism had left me quite unprepared to answer this more fundamental question about my personal identity separate from my place in the market. That grieved me because, as a Christian, I had been better versed in the catechism of secular pragmatism than in Lord’s Days 12 and 13 or the Scriptures. And I knew I wasn’t the only one.

The Answer that Changes Everything

The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ . . . .

—Romans 8:16-17a

As I have reflected on that encounter over the years, I’ve realized that the biblical and covenantal answer to the question, “Who are you?” is a glorious one that stands in stark contrast to the secular myth that our employment or “career” defines us. Of course, our work and callings as Christians in the marketplace are important. Providing for our families is a great privilege and responsibility. But the priority of work in both our lives and the education of our children is almost certainly misplaced and overemphasized today in Reformed circles.

Our Calvinistic work ethic and sense of vocation—serving the Lord in all things—are a glorious heritage, but in our 21^st century context, they have become largely indistinguishable from the middle class idolatry common among of our unbelieving neighbors (i.e., having “another object in which men place their trust” [Heidelberg Catechism, Q. 95]). In fact, over 30+ years of university teaching, evenly divided between secular universities and Christian colleges, I can testify that the one question all parents—Christian and non-Christian alike—ask about higher education is, “What kind of job can my kid get when he/she graduates?” Intended or not, that question reveals deep worldview priorities. And such a question is certainly not the fruit of careful, prayerful parental reflection on what it means to educate covenant children as heirs of Christ who will seek first the kingdom.

By contrast, the Scriptures never identify God’s covenant children as people with jobs who happen to hold to a particular religious tradition. Instead, the Bible repeatedly calls us heirs of a kingdom, adopted sons and daughters of the King of the universe. We are not just Christians who happen to have various jobs or work to do. We are royalty (Rom. 8:14-17, Eph. 1:3-6, I Pet. 2:9). We will reign over all creatures with Christ eternally (Heid. Cat., Q. 32). We are the adopted children of God and fellow heirs with Jesus, with all the privileges of the sons of God (Luke 2:11, Acts 10:36, I Tim. 6:15, Rev. 19:16; Heid. Cat., Q. 34). We are princes and princesses of the King of kings! We are royal heirs! And that answer to the question, “Who are you?”—changes everything.

Like young Prince George, the child heir to the throne of England and the United Kingdom, a day mustn’t pass that we wonder who we are, why we are being educated, and what we are being prepared to be and to do. We are heirs to a throne and a Kingdom far greater and more glorious than the one in England. The House of Windsor pales in comparison to Jesus’s realm and our divine inheritance! How much more, then, should we, who are heirs of the King of kings and Lord of lords, prepare ourselves and our children to be thoroughly and faithfully educated in everything it means to be a son and daughter of the Creator, Redeemer, and Lord of the Universe. Thoroughly and faithfully educated in everything it means to be royalty.

This is no time for the wicked nonsense about “sowing wild oats” or setting a low bar of expectations for our children. That is the rebellious spirit of prodigals who forget who they (and their children) really are. Those who are in line to take their places in Christ’s kingdom as princes and princesses must expect more of themselves and of their children. “To whom much is given, much is required” (Luke 12:48). Because we are royalty in Christ, God has king-sized expectations and blessings in store for us and our children—if we have eyes to see and ears to hear.

The entire book of Proverbs is Solomon’s instruction to his royal heirs “to know wisdom and instruction, to understand words of insight, to receive instruction in wise dealing, in righteousness, justice, and equity; to give prudence to the simple, knowledge and discretion to the youth—let the wise hear and increase in learning, and the one who understands obtain guidance, to understand a proverb and a saying, the words of the wise and their riddles” (Prov. 1:2-6). Such an education must provide much more than an awareness of fragmented facts or specialized work skills for a place in the job market. Again, that’s not to say that facts and skills are not important. Nor is it to say that we should suddenly trade pragmatic, nose-to-the-grindstone sweat of our brows for pious sounding spiritual platitudes.

The issues are (1) where does the education of Christ’s royal heirs fit in our list of priorities and (2) what should that education look like.

Priorities: We are Royalty. So Start Acting Like It.

Have you forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons? “My son, do not regard lightly the instruction of the Lord, nor be weary when corrected by him. For the Lord instructs the one he loves, and corrects every son whom he receives.” It is for instruction that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons.

—Hebrews 12:5-7

Those who are fellow heirs in Christ know that His regal ways are not the power-grabbing, lording-it-over-others, self-seeking ways of the ungodly. Far from it. Christ ascended to His Father’s throne only after sacrificing everything for His people and His creation. He gave himself away. His royal way is the way of selfless love and sacrifice. He died that we might die to sin and death. He lives that we might live in glory forever. Sacrificial service for the sake of the kingdom is the mark of true kingship, true royalty. It characterizes our Lord Christ. And it must characterize our Lord’s true heirs in their lives and in their education.

As Christ’s royal heirs, we dare not be content to prepare ourselves or our children merely to be cogs in the economic machinery of our secular consumer culture. Even the ancients understood that slaves are only trained to perform tasks. They have no rights of inheritance, no deeper identity. A slave’s identity is his work. But free citizens and royalty, who will dedicate themselves to the advance of the kingdom, must be educated deeply for the day when their royal leadership and service is expected. Similarly, we are called to a higher purpose and bear greater responsibility for how we live and prepare our children for their royal callings.

Unfortunately, we have, as the author of Hebrews suggests, forgotten the divine exhortation to educate our children in the nurture and instruction of the Lord (Eph. 6:4, Heb. 12:5ff). We have forgotten in part because we have forgotten who we are.

A Royal Education: Recovering the Lost Tools of Learning.

This memory lapse is most evident in how we educate our children today. Education, even that which purports to be Christian, is now often devoted primarily to the goal of producing good little workers for the secular labor force, efficient widgets for our economy’s production line, and little more.

That falls far short of the biblical expectation that Christian children be saturated in the instruction of the Lord and grow up knowing what it means to be royal heirs of Christ the King. An education bearing the name of the King ought, at the least, to offer His royal heirs . . .

A comprehensive and integrative understanding of God’s world and of how all things cohere in the Lord Jesus Christ (Eph. 1:4-11). Such an education will give children the “big picture” of how all things, all spheres of creation, are interrelated in the glory of their Creator.The university itself was a Christian invention in the Middle Ages (the earliest established between A.D. 1100 and 1200), designed to give students an integrated Christian vision and foundation for all future learning. That was the original purpose of the classical liberal arts (meaning, the arts of a free citizen). For almost a millennium, Christian universities taught the classical liberal arts or the so-called Trivium and Quadrivium:
- The Trivium, or the Three Ways, stressed the good structure of language (Grammar), the way to discern truth (Logic), and how to express truth beautifully (Rhetoric)—all to encourage a student’s life-long love of goodness, truth, and beauty in words and language, as typified by The Word Himself in John 1:1-14.
- The Quadrivium, or the Four Ways, encouraged a life-long love of goodness, truth, and beauty in the use of numbers (Arithmetic), numbers in space (Geometry), numbers in time (Music or Harmony), and numbers in space and time (Astronomy), revealing the unity and diversity of creation and of our Triune Creator Himself (Deut. 6:4, “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one,” and Matt. 28:19, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit”).
- Together, the Trivium and Quadrivium, the original seven liberal arts, offered students essential insights into the harmony and wholeness of God’s diverse world and into the interrelated truth, goodness and beauty of its Triune Creator. They didn’t give students just the facts or skills for a job, but the tools of lifelong learning from a Christian perspective.

Unfortunately, today’s arbitrarily selected smorgasbord of academic subjects and randomly structured university curricula, following the modern analytic, scientific tradition, tend to do the opposite: they offer fragmented bits of information with no principle of coherence or relationship. But in God’s economy, the whole is always more than the sum of its parts. An education that does not teach us how to see the wholeness of God’s creation, and to equip us to understand how all things cohere in Christ, inevitably misses the big picture about creation and creation’s God. It is a partial, incomplete, distorted education.

Curiously, specialization at the undergraduate level was virtually unknown in North America prior to the late 19^th century. University students did not “major” in a narrow academic disciplines or vocational specializations prior to 1879. They couldn’t. “Majors” simply didn’t exist before then. Instead, all undergraduates received a classical, integrated liberal arts foundation. The universities gave them essential tools for learning that applied to all their various callings as sons and daughters, spouses, parents, neighbors, citizens, providers, voters, buyers and sellers in the marketplace, and parishioners. Their work skills and the job training needed to provide for their families were developed outside the classroom in on-site training or apprenticeships done in the context where the work was actually being done. Augustine, Luther, Calvin, Kuyper, C.S. Lewis—all the greatest leaders in our Christian tradition—were so classically educated in the traditional, integrative liberal arts of the Trivium and Quadrivium and practically trained.

But pragmatists of the late 19^th and early 20^th century sold their Christian academic birthright for a mess of modernist career pottage. They turned schools into egalitarian job training camps for the workers of the world and abandoned the Christian pursuit of wisdom and knowledge in the Lord. The schools dumbed down and the church has grown steadily weaker ever since.

Reversing that trend will require that the King’s royal heirs expect . . .

Truly godly and wise teacher-mentors (Luke 6:40). According to Jesus, the teacher—not the curriculum, not the lesson plan, not the technology, not the facilities, not the accreditation, not the tuition rate—is the single most important factor in a child’s education. “A student, when mature, will be like his teacher,” Jesus said. All the other bells and whistles may be nice (though they can often be more of a distraction than a help), but the teacher is key.Yet, in my experience, Christian parents often know more about a school’s university admission rates, or a college’s career placement rates, or tuition rates, or financial aid plans, or sports programs than they do about the character and spiritual health of the men and women who will actually be shaping the minds and lives of their children in and out of the classroom. Sadly, many Christian school administrators and boards aren’t much better, giving higher priority to paper credentials and standardized test scores and bricks and mortar than to the character and spiritual integrity of their teachers. Of course, academic expertise and standardized testing have their place. But parents, administrators and school promotional literature often stress most what actually counts least from a Kingdom perspective. And such misguided emphases have the potential to catechize generations of parents and children in what is least in the Kingdom.
The teacher is so crucial, as Jesus says, because all education is fundamentally personal. That’s because truth itself is personal. Truth is a person. Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth and the life” (John 14:6). Truth is not some collection of brute facts or scientifically verifiable propositions. It is a living person. Teachers either faithfully represent or embody that Truth before their students or they don’t. Parents or educators who misunderstand this crucial biblical principle put their children and students at grave risk of misunderstanding the Truth and being catechized in lies and ungodliness. No matter how much parents think their child can be a “good witness” in a secular education environment, that child is not the teacher, but the one being taught. And no matter how mature we imagine our children to be (often overestimating), their “cement is still wet.” They are still students seeking to be taught and led into maturity, readily influenced by others older and more experienced. The question is, who will teach them and lead them into what kind of maturity?

Moreover, those who think that new distance learning technologies will provide a quality education without putting their children at risk under ungodly teachers make a similar mistake. Learning godly knowledge and wisdom is not a data download. A student will be shaped by his or her teacher, no matter who that teacher is, no matter how the instruction is delivered.

Finally, the education of the King’s royal heirs ought also to include . . .

The shaping of our desires for the things of the Kingdom

“Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? . . . For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.”

—Matthew 6:25, 32-33

Jesus did not say, “Seek first vocational-technical training, and all that kingdom of God and righteousness stuff will be added later.” Yet to hear parents of university-bound students talk today about their educational goals for their children, you’d think he had. The dominant secular vocational paradigm for higher education has influenced us more on these issues than our Christian schools, our catechism classes, and even our churches. For that, we must repent. Our heavenly Father knows everything we need to live and to thrive, and He will provide them for us by His perfect means according to His perfect timing. He tells us explicitly not to stress over the little stuff. Grasping at college majors and career preparation will not add one penny to our bank accounts, put one more meal on the table, or add one more second to our lives that He has not already ordained. So stop majoring in the minors. Instead, major in God’s priorities: Christ’s kingdom and His righteousness.

What our schools and universities must encourage in our covenant children is a deeply held heart-desire for the things of God and of His Kingdom.

As Calvinists who take the sovereignty of God—the crown rights of Christ—seriously, we cannot, must not, train our children merely to be good little widgets in the secular marketplace who also happen to go to church each Lord’s Day. We vowed to raise them for much greater things at their baptisms.

So, “Who are you?”

You are the royal heirs of the King of kings; start acting like it.

Your children are royalty; start treating them like it.

Your children are inheriting a Kingdom; so start educating them for it.

{Originally published at Reformed Perspectives}

Dr. Roy Alden Atwood is the president, and a founder, of New Saint Andrews College (www.nsa.edu) in Moscow, Idaho<>быстро продвинуть

On May 7, 2014 By Kuyperian In Scribblings Like

Smoke Signal Philosophy

I love it when an author explicitly mentions why they wrote the book. I like it even better when their summary actually summarizes what the book says, as opposed to what they hope it says. Neil Postman poignantly abstracts his book, Amusing Ourselves to Death, and then gives a concrete example:

“[This book’s] value, such that it is, resides in the directness of its perspective, which had its origins in observations made 2,300 years ago by Plato. It is an argument that fixes its attention on the forms of human conversation, and postulates that how we are obliged to conduct such conversations will have the strongest possible influence on what ideas we can conveniently express. And what ideas are convenient to express inevitably become the important content of culture.

I use the word “conversation” metaphorically to refer not only to speech but to all techniques and technologies that permit people of a particular culture to exchange messages. In this sense, all culture is a conversation or, more precisely, a corporation of conversations, conducted in a variety of symbolic modes. Our attention here is on how forms of public discourse regulate and even dictate what kind of content can issue from such forms.

To take a simple example of what this means, consider the primitive technology of smoke signals. While I do not know exactly what content was once carried in the smoke signals of American Indians, I can safely guess that it did not include philosophical argument. Puffs of smoke are insufficiently complex to express ideas on the nature of existence, and even if they were not, a Cherokee philosopher would run short of either wood or blankets long before he reached his second axiom. You cannot use smoke to do philosophy. Its form excludes the content.”

Buy the book here:

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On April 30, 2014 By Kuyperian In Scribblings Like

The Future of Protestantism Conversation with Peter Leithart, Fred Sanders, and Carl Trueman

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On April 29, 2014 By Kuyperian In Scribblings Like

Palin’s Pugnacity

In a recent speech before the NRA, Sarah Palin boasted that she would not “coddle” America’s adversaries if she were running the country. To resounding applause, Palin declared that under her administration, enemies would “know that waterboarding is how we baptize terrorists.”

Joe Carter of the Gospel Coalition writes an excellent response to Palin’s foolish words, and concludes by saying that “our enemies need to accept Jesus and to be baptized by water and the Spirit. That is the Christian way, not as Palin would have it, to have our enemies fear a pagan god and have their spirit broken by water.”

Rod Dreher of The American Conservative also points out that Palin’s views more resemble the terrorist (!) Jacobins of the French Revolution than the traditional conservatism Palin ostensibly espouses.

Palin’s remarks should cause Christians—especially those in the military—to evaluate our own affiliations and allegiances. Are we willing to stand with the Prince of Peace, even if it means looking weak to the world? Or are we more comfortable among political ideologies that baptize violence?<>mega-vzlom

On April 28, 2014 By Kuyperian In Scribblings Like

Rocks and Locks

by Marc Hays

This morning, my kids and I wrote an epigram during our family Bible reading. It may have been written before, but it was original to the HaysHaus this morning. A summary of John 20:

“A rock can’t keep Jesus in, and a lock can’t keep Jesus out.”

Hallelujah!

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On April 28, 2014 By Kuyperian In Theology, Wisdom Like

A Schnauzer at a Smorgasbord of Spew

Like a dog returns to his vomit is a fool who repeats his folly. Proverbs 26:11

If you find it disgusting, then you’re pickin’ up what he’s layin’ down. It really is meant to be gross.

In the study of rhetoric, this verse is a prime example of a flawless, deductive argument. The principles undergirding the premises need not be explained, for two very obvious things are assumed by the sage as he constructs his argument to instruct his progeny: first, everybody knows what a dog does upon returning to his regurgitation, and secondly, everybody knows what it tastes like.

Beginning with second assumed premise–we all know what it tastes like. Vomit is not vomit unless it exits via the hole that it previously entered as food. The open-ended digestive system is only at peace when it is a one-way-street. In all the recent conversation about natural law, here’s a good example: the food is supposed to go in one hole and come out the other one. Anything entering or exiting the wrong, respective, human orifice is unnatural, i.e. not designed to work that way. A happy digestive system is like a British boy-band: Mono-directional.

Now, back to the first premise: what do dogs do upon returning to their up-chuck? Are dogs acting against nature when they feast upon their own puke? Apparently not—I’ve never met a dog that has resisted this smorgasbord of spew, but the fact that they eat it doesn’t make it food. It doesn’t make it any less vomit in their mouth than it was on the ground. Eating vomit does not make it food. It stays vomit, hence, the inherent, visceral urge to vomit upon reading this proverb.

Why does this proverbial argument about fools communicate so effectively? It resonates, deep-down, because it doesn’t need to be explained. Once you know what barf is, which every reader of this proverb knows all too well, then you are repulsed by the prospect of eating it, which would be entirely unnatural for a human, or even by the thought of a dog eating it, which naturally occurs every time they encounter it.

Are you a fool? Am I a fool? Today, are we going to repeat our folly? If we do, we are like a beagle at a banquet of barf; a poodle at a parfait of puke; or a schnauzer at a smorgasbord of spew.<>раскрутка web ов